Authors

Michael Elleman

Michael Elleman is Senior Fellow for Missile Defence at the IISS. A leading global expert, his work is focused on assessing and countering missile threats, particularly from North Korea and Iran. He is the principal author of Missile-Defence Cooperation in the Gulf (IISS, 2016), Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A net assessment (IISS, 2010) and the chapter on ballistic missile capabilities in the Strategic Dossier entitled North Korea’s Security Challenges (2011). He has also written numerous articles on missile proliferation and US–NATO–Russian cooperation on missile defense and is increasingly exploring issues regarding space security. Earlier this year he testified to the US Congress and is frequently asked to provide expert commentary on CNN, Al Jazeera , PBS and other news outlets.

Before joining the IISS in 2009, Mike Elleman spent five years at Booz Allen Hamilton, a US consulting firm, where he supported the implementation of Cooperative Threat Reduction programs sponsored by the US Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. He also provided weapons proliferation analyses to the Advanced Systems and Concepts Office at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He spent 18 months at the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission as a missile expert for weapons inspection missions in Iraq. Prior to joining the UN, he spent two decades as a scientist as Lockheed Martin’s Research and Development Laboratory, where his activities focused on solid propellants, weapons elimination technologies, nuclear effects and special materials research. From 1995 to 2001, he led a Cooperative Threat Reduction program in Russia, aimed at dismantling obsolete long-range missiles. He is a graduate of physics from the University of California, Berkeley.